i 9 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



machines. In a general way the process is that of carding cotton, 

 but the resemblance is only general. Between the carding ma- 

 chinery and the loom, in the wool manufacture proper, there is 

 now but one machine, the mule or frame ; but in the manipula- 

 tion of cotton there are several machines between card and loom, 

 and the doublings amount to thousands. Thus the carding pro- 

 cess in the woolen manufacture is the most important of all in 

 one sense, instead of the spinning, as in cotton manufacture. 



There are two systems of carding now in common use. That 

 most generally adopted in the woolen manufacture in England 

 consists of a scribbler, containing two swifts, an intermediate, 

 also with two swifts, and a carder, containing two swifts and a 

 condenser. The system universally in vogue in this country in 

 the woolen manufacture has the same set of three machines 

 (called here the first breaker, the second breaker, and the finish- 

 er), but each engine having but one swift or large cylinder, as in 

 the illustration here given. Both systems produce satisfactory 

 results. Each of these three machines is nearly similar, and each 

 advances the'material from the other. The main organ of a card 

 is the cylinder, generally about four feet in diameter, and covered 

 with card clothing, not different in principle from the primitive 

 clothing above described. Around this cylinder revolve several 

 smaller cylinders, similarly clothed, called workers, which con- 

 tinually remove the wool from the main cylinder, separating the 

 fibers and combing them. From the workers, as they become 

 saturated with wool, it is removed by another roll with longer 

 teeth, called the " fancy," which revolves at a higher speed. The 

 carded avooI is then removed by the " doffer," and passes on to the 

 second and third machine, to undergo the same process twice 

 more, each time by finer card clothing, until it is finally removed 

 by a pair of small rollers called condensers. These condensers, 

 one above the other, have strips of card clothing affixed, which 

 alternate. Thus the wool is taken off in long strips, which pass 

 through more condensing rollers which are given a transverse 

 rectilinear motion, the combination of these two giving a soft and 

 twisted thread of woolen yarn or sliver. 



Some conception of the amount of dislocation and blending of 

 fibers to which these carding engines subject the wool is possible 

 from the fact that there are upward of fifty-six million teeth or 

 points in an ordinary English card, fifty millions of which come 

 in contact with the wool, separating and carrying it forward, six 

 millions playing the part of extractors, drawing the fibers from 

 the teeth of the other rollers. Prof. Beaumont estimates that, in 

 an ordinary scribbling engine, the wool is continually subjected 

 to the disturbing and intermixing action of twenty-five thousand 

 points. Remembering that this operation is three times per- 



